This invention relates to the field of electronic switching devices and, more particularly, to solid state switching devices.
In recent years, electronic systems for a wide variety of applications have increasingly been revised to incorporate integrated circuitry. By thus replacing an assemblage of discrete electronic components with integrated circuits, the systems designer is frequently able to reduce the weight and bulk of a circuit while concurrently achieving an increased level of reliability for the system in which the integrated circuitry is incorporated.
An illustrative area in which such integrated circuitry has been successfully introduced is radar technology. Integrated circuitry has been incorporated in the signal transmitting, receiving, and antenna steering portions of radar systems to great advantage. In the effort to develop monolithic microwave integrated circuits for radar, however, it has become necessary to provide a solid state switching element for switching the radar antenna circuitry between the transmitting and receiving portions of the system. Available devices have proven to be unsuited for this task, which requires a high power handling capability for the transmit mode, coupled with a low loss characteristic for the receive mode.